Now you kids may be asking: "Why has it been so long since you came to Seattle"

Well, we've been saving the love for you homies!

I saw The Aquabats in concert tonight. It was fabulous. Granted, it would have been nice if the place (Graceland) was a little bigger, since skanking became more like moshing with the limited room. And I would have preffered it to be a bit cooler then the sweltering hot temperature that it was. But those are minor points. They're so much fun and put on a great show.

Also today (big entertainment day) I realized I hadn't been to see a movie in a long time. Now, even though I'm off to see one tomorrow I got that bug in me and caught the last matine of Tomb Raider 2 on the way home from work. This was ridiculous, sensational, and mindless. It was cut poorly, had way too many "money" shots without the substance to back them up, and overall reminded me of XXX or the latest (and poor) Bond movies. It was still kinda fun though, mostly because Angelina Jolie is easy on the eyes. Then I get home and read the following in Newsweek

"I'm a person who hasn't had a relationship in a very long time and hasn't had sex for over a year, so I find my personal life really boring." - Actress Angelina Jolie.

That's just wong.

Speaking of things that are a bit wrong. Also in Newsweek this week is the news that Mini-mi (aka Verne Toyer) is getting married. Read about it here. The crazy thing is he's 2 foot 8 inches and she's 6 foot 2. Call me dirty, but I'm wondering how certain parts of their relationship work...

Ahhh, Fozzy and I are bringing back the summer movie night tration. Yes that's right, we're organizing a crowd to see American Wedding on Friday night.

The crazy part is indications point to this movie actually being good. I wasn't really expecting that.

Well, my extended family was in town all last week. It was fun and good to see them again - but it made for a very busy week. But then my friend Matty H came to town on Thursday. Now, the title of this site is an inside joke with Matty so it was fun to have him in town. In honor of our movie past we watched An Evening With Kevin Smith again. If you're a fan of his work you should watch this, it's good entertainment.

Then last night I watched some of Sex and the City season 4. I wasn't too impressed with Season 3 and Season 4 doesn't seem to be turning it around in the first two episodes. We'll see if I get around to watching more.

But I did notice something weird that I also pickup up on when I was watching Six Feet Under last week. I watch all my TV content with my Tivo, essentially eliminating commercials. This means that you only get about 22-24 minutes of content out of 30 minutes of TV. But with HBO shows they don't have commercials, so you tend to get about 30 mintes of content for 30 minutes of TV. I found a little internal clock going off about 22 minutes into the Sex and the City episodes saying, this episode should be over now, why is it still going. I found this to be very strange and a little bit worrisome.

Ring the fucking bell you pansy.

Old School really is the funniest movie I've seen in a long time. I watched it again last night and was happy to see that it held up well on the second viewing. I suspect this one will be sure laughs whenever I feel like watching it.

On my first viewing I was most struck by Vince Vaughn. But this time around I realized that I really liked Will Farrell in this movie. This was notable for me because I usually don't really like his comedy. I really like both Zoolander and the Austin Powers movies but I find that Will Farrells bits tend to drag for me in both of those movies. I think it's just his comedic style that doesn't jive with me, but this time it worked.

I also watched The Terminator over the weekend. After seeing T3 and thinking about the original two I realized I hadn't seen the first one in a long, long time. I'd forgotten that the original is much more of a horror movie, while the sequels are very much pure action/chase movies. Also, the first one delves into the paradoxes of time travel much more, and in the end the only logical conclusion I can make of it is the path of time is set, and there's nothing we can do about it. That whole "There's no fate but what we make" crap they spout in T2 doesn't hold up at all with the first film. Which is precisely why the ending of the third one makes lots of sense to me (that shouldn't be too much of a spoiler...)

I'm a pretty big nerd. I know my way around most consumer electronics and such, but I've always felt a little urge to be good at mechanical things, you know, building stuff. I have friends that weld, fix up engines, and in general put things together. This feeling is perhaps most pronounced when I watch Junkyard Wars. Those guys are studs and I stand in awe whenever I watch that show.

I was reminded of this by something I saw today. I had a similar feeling of un-manliness when I saw this jet powered CRX.

I was home in Eugene this weekend and my parents had the DVD set for season one of Six Feet Under. I watched the first three episodes a while ago, and while they were well made they didn't grip me. But while there I watched episodes 4-7. It appears I just stopped at the wrong place before because these really pick up at episode 4 and 5. Now I'm hooked and have since watched up through episode 12. I only have one more to go to finish season one.

Now I run into the same tough place I did with Sex And The City a while ago. I watch through the episodes on DVD and really get interested in the show. To the point that I think about subscribing to HBO to watch it. But then I remember that the DVD's are at least 2 seasons behind what's airing. So if I subscibe to watch them I've missed out on two full seasons of storylines. Instead I just wait for them on DVD and rent them when they release. Fox did this right with 24 last season. They released the DVD set of the first season before the second season aired. So if you hadn't watched the show in season one but picked up the DVD you could watch through all of them and then start right in on the broadcast of season two. Plus 24 naturally lends itslef to having all the episodes sitting in one place to be watched back to back. Aalthough without the commercials they won't truly be in real time, so you coulnd't do the insanity of a 24 hour 24 marathon (why would you want to, it would be painful...)

Then last night I finally got around to seeing The Matrix Reloaded on IMAX. The worst thing about this is they showed an IMAX trailer before the film. Allow me to explain: IMAX screens have an aspect ratio of 4:3 (like most TV's) but regular movie theaters are closer to 16:9 (there are actually several different ratios, I won't go into that.) This is why many DVD's or less commonly VHS tapes are letterboxed with the black bars on the top and bottom. They're making up for the differences in screen size and choosing to throw away screen real estate but keep the entire movie image. The other method is called pan and scan (what most VHS tapes do) where they recut the film throwing away the sides of the picture so they can fill the whole TV. But what does this mean to IMAX?

Well, in order to not cut out part of the movie they letterboxed it on the IMAX screen. Now, since the screen is huge a letterboxed version is still giant but it doesn't have the oppressive assault on your peripheral vision that IMAX usually has. This would have all been cool, I don't go to IMAX movies very much, I didn't REALLY remember what that was like. But then they played a preview in the full IMAX format and reminded me. After that the letterboxed version just didn't seem as cool.

That said the sound was excellent. And the special film IMAX uses meant the picture was crystal clear (much clearer then a typical movie projection.) And since the stadium seating is so severe you end up sitting pretty close to this huge image without craning your neck at all (this was cancelled out by the remarkable uncomfortable seats.)

Final verdict: Outside of the uncomfortable seats this is a slightly better experience then seeing the movie in a high quality regular theater (I'm comparing to the Cinerama in Seattle if you know the area.) But unless you're a nut like me it probably isn't better enough to warrant a special trip. And it certainly isn't better enough to go see the movie again if you weren't thinking about it anyway. It's still the same film.

Boarding House on the WB really is a good show. I'm impressed every week by the solid reality TV they've created. Part of it is I like to watch the surfing, and they treat the surf competetions like an extended highlight reel. So it's not the full blown sports coverage you'd get watching the event on ESPN or something, but it's pretty good.

The real key is you're watching interesting people who are not dealing with some fabricated thing. This was the way The Real World was for the first few seasons - and it was really good. Since then they've started having them all do the same job and work together, which adds stress and reduces individuality a bit. The other key is they've started selecting people who are really screwed up. Before they'd just get colorful people that would have interesting reactions - now they select poster children for why therapy exists.

But north shore avoids all this. They just have a bunch of surfers in the house. And while all the surfers are competing in the same set of tournemtents, they all go about it in different ways. And in the end they aren't the dominating people the field (with the exception of Sunny.) Yeah, they're good, but they're not expected to win and seem to get eliminated in a lot of first round heats.

I guess the key is when I watch the show I actually feel like I'm watching people I'd want to meet and get to know in real life. And I don't feel like I'm seeing some contrived, game playing version of them, I'm see the real person.

In the end isn't that what reality TV is supposed to be, reality?

Life is pain... Anyone who says differently is selling something.

My friend Wendy had never seen The Princess Bride so we watched it on Saturday night. This was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid (along with SpaceBalls) and I continue to enjoy it every time. There are tons of quoteables, but the reason I chose the one above is because it doesn't really fit with the others - it's one of the few places that the movie is dark and real. Most of the time it's comical and fun, but they slip in real stuff every now and then.

Overall there aren't many movies with a higher quote density then this one. I found myself giggling all the time at the classic lines (Wendy was very good to put up with this...)

I just wish Rob Reiner would go back to making good movies. Seriously, look at his track record. Before 1996 he directed The American President, A Few Good Men, Misery, When Harry Met Sally, The Princess Bride, Stand By Me, and This Is Spinal Tap. Since then he's made Ghosts of Mississippi, some random TV movie, The Story of Us and Alex and Emma. Ghosts of Mississippi and The Story of Us weren't terrible, but they weren't really good either. I've yet to see Alex and Emma but I haven't heard anything redeeming about it. Seriously, that first list reads like a greated hits compendium - this guy has done some truly great movies. Rob, where did you go man? What happened?

All spring I sat in theaters and saw trailers for Terminator 3 and just kept saying how much of a train wreck it was going to be. Well, I saw it tonight and suprise - it wasn't really a train wreck! Although it wasn't a great movie either, but we'll get to that.

This movie is as sparse with dialog as any I can remember. A solid half the lines had to be one liners. And the whole thing is really just a non-stop action/chase scene. But they are well done, if not smart.

At a certain point I wonder when these two super advanced, intelligent killing machines will realize that they're effectively indistructable without seriously heavy ordinance. Sometimes I wonder why they bother with the hand to hand fights and small arms fire. But there I go, thinking too much.

Nick Stahl and Clair Danes did a good job actually having emotion since neither of the machines had any. But my favorite is the TX (the bad girl) suffered from Star Trek syndrome. Often in Star Trek there will be some huge crisis and the ship will explode unless some character can get to some place and stop it in like, say, 30 seconds. So they cut to that person on the way to main engineering or something and while the central computer is announcing 28...27...26...25 seconds to total destuction. And what are they doing? Walking! I don't know, if it was me I'd be booking down the corridor at a full sprint. But I guess that would be indignified for an officer. Anyway, that's what I call Star Trek syndrome and The TX did this - all the time. By moving slow she gave the characters time to do stuff they needed to do, like survive. I guess as a machine she had a heightened sense of the dramatic or something. Damn! Thinking too much again.

So that's it, the whole thing is a big, well made, brainless ride. I mean, how can you go wrong with having a firetruck try to sideswipe a deployed crane while booking down a city street. Plus, no movie has more collateral damage then this one.

There is one exception to the no brain thing. The end of the movie is, yes, get this, smart. I know, I couldn't believe it. Not only is it smart but it makes T2 ok as well. In a week or so when I'm not worried about spoilers maybe I'll go off about the problems in T2 and how T3 makes them all better, but for now I'll spare you.

There you go - it's not the train wreck I thought it would be. How's that for a ringing endorsement?

Note: Wendy and Tanya deserve special credit for coming along with me and Guy to this one. Especially since Guy and I got super geeky talking about comic book movies.

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